ESG turned ‘accident’ into music history
When Renee Scroggins formed a band called ESG with her three younger sisters in 1978, the notion of creating a ground-breaking mix of punk, funk and soul that would be...
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U2: Beauty and bombast at United Center
There was beauty and bombast, tenderness and ham-fistedness, and a tale of “innocence” and “experience.” It was the best and sometimes the worst of U2 in an ambitious multi-media show...
Courtney Barnett delivers modest songs, bold solos at Cultural Center
Courtney Barnett sings a lot of songs about cocooning with friends and just wanting to disappear. She’s not exactly born to be on stage. But her guitar has a nasty...
Ric Wilson authors melodic hip-hop on ‘Banba’
At 22, Ric Wilson has already unfurled a series of EPs that have established him as another in a long line of Young Chicago Authors alums whose music feels inextricable...
The Sea and Cake rolls with the changes
Sam Prekop was getting so much enjoyment out of making a solo album built on analog synthesizers a few years ago that he couldn’t quite wrap his head around the...
Courtney Barnett lets modesty, empathy rule on ‘Tell Me How You Really Feel’
Don't say Courtney Barnett didn't warn you. "Put me on a pedestal and I'll only disappoint you," she sang on her acclaimed 2015 debut album, words that were often interpreted...
Why Childish Gambino and Kanye West rise above the shouting about race and racism
It's the week that Childish Gambino blew up social media with a video dubbed "This is America," a meta commentary on the way pop culture and real-life violence collide and...
Power Trip won’t be boxed in
Power Trip more than lives up to its name, with an attack that finds the intersection between hardcore punk and thrash metal. But it also adds splashes of progressive invention,...
Eleanor Friedberger takes a trip, reboots sound on ‘Rebound’
"Let me forget the words." That's the wish that opens Eleanor Friedberger's fourth studio album, "Rebound" (Frenchkiss). The album loosely chronicles a journey into the singer's ancestral past in Greece,...
Sarah Shook: ‘A fighter, not a lover’
Sarah Shook doesn't think all that much of her voice. For her, it's just a vehicle of sorts — the most expedient means of conveying the words that spill out...